Restriction on The Use of Social Media to Avoid Hoax

In this modern era, social media become one of the facilities to get information. Social media facilitate citizens to get information around the world. Social media users can easily participate, share, create forum and virtual world.

Indonesia government declared a restriction on the use of social media as one of the efforts to avoid hoax. This action has been done starting in May 2019. There are pros and cons regarding this action.

The use of social media should be restricted to avoid hoax because Indonesian lack of reading. They only read the title without read the whole information. Moreover, Indonesian are easy to believe to any information in social media. A fatal action, such as sharing the information without understand the content, is one of the reason why people agree to restrict the use of social media.

On the other hand, some people use social media not only for entertainment but also for working. If social media being restricted, they cannot work as usual. Media is the one that make and spread the hoax. So, the restriction on the use of social media to avoid hoax is not effective.

In this case, government should give knowledge to Indonesian how to sort out any information in social media. The government also should pay attention to who make and spread the hoax so they could get a retribution rather than restrict the use of social media.